Instinct
by ElfieWrites
Summary: What happens when a long-lost friend tumbles into your life? Literally? Long story, work in progress. Update: Part 3 as of 9/25
1. Part One

Author's Note: This story is incomplete and I must warn you, the reader, that I have no prediction of when it will be completed, if at all. Sometimes when writing longer stories I lose my interest before completion. So take the warning that this might never be finished. I prefer writing the whole thing first, then posting parts slowly, rather than writing as one goes. It's more reliable that way. As a reader myself, I know I hate when stories are left incomplete with no word from the author. So I give fair warning now. Stop here if you wanted a promise that this story will have an ending. If it is ever near completion, I will remove this warning. But for now, with so little written, it stays. Updates will come as they may, as I work on both "The Way the Hustle Goes" and various short stories.  
  
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A darting figure slipped only half-seen through the dark night, sliding from one set of shadows to another. He traveled stealthily, but with difficulty. If anyone had gotten close enough they would have seen a wretchedly dirty man, with limp hair of an unidentifiable color. His stained clothes hung raggedly, as if they had once been filled out by someone healthier than this starved-looking creature. If anyone had seen him, they would have thought him nothing more than a homeless bum. One who was extremely antisocial, constantly slipping away from human contact. But no one ever got close enough to see any of this. He made very sure to travel at night through the shadows, tirelessly crawling along on foot, and sometimes with hands as well, toward his goal.  
  
The thought of reaching that goal was all that drove his bruised and battered feet onward. Sometimes he fell to using his hands to travel, too. He didn't want to lose a minute of the night to rest, with that goal so close in the dark city. He didn't know exactly why he was seeking that house, that safe haven. Not why that house in particular, of all others he could look for. He just knew that when he reached it, he would find safety and comfort. He couldn't have said out loud why. He had reverted to basic, animalistic drives. He just knew deep down where to go, and went there without question.  
  
Creeping along in the alleys, he was almost comforted by the familiar sounds and smells he remembered from long ago. Even in his highly alert state, he felt a sense of returning home seep into his heart. Not much further to go, he realized. His energy was failing after days upon days of stealing on foot through dark nights across the country, but the warmth of his former home gave him a last burst that built up his courage enough to stumble up a familiar stoop on all fours, reaching up to scrabble for the doorbell. His strained hearing caught the sounds of someone approaching the doors and he fell back, looking up eagerly, hungrily. When the door opened, spilling light into his face, he clenched his eyes shut, blinded, but a relieved sound, perhaps a laugh, escaped his mouth before he collapsed. 


	2. Part Two

Although the early autumn night was a bit chilly, Helga Pataki didn't feel the need to turn on the furnace in the house. Instead, she pulled the maroon quilted chenille throw off of her bed and carried it downstairs with her. The house was quiet and peaceful, a perfect night to settle down with the thick novel she was halfway through. The necessity of snuggling up under a soft blanket to keep warm only made the atmosphere even cozier.  
  
Helga truly didn't mind that she was spending a beautiful Friday night indoors with her book while most single females her age would be out partying somewhere. She worked an unexciting job at a local bookstore, and in her spare time both read the books she could receive on discount and wrote pieces of her own. The written word was her passion. In college, she had studied literature and creative writing, but afterwards wasn't sure what to do with her life. She could become a professional writer, if luck was with her, or could have pursued a career in teaching English, if she had a mind too. But she still felt young, with plenty of life ahead of her, so she was content to sit back for awhile and see what opportunities would come to her before seeking them herself.  
  
In fact, she hadn't even really moved out of her childhood home. She returned home after college, not because she missed it much, but because it seemed the best place to live at the time. After all, her parents were moving out and she had begged them to allow her to continue living there. She paid rent to her father, who, along with her mother, now lived in California. She was happy with the arrangement though. She got to live alone in a familiar place with a comfortable job to support her and plenty of free time to write poetry and stories. It was unexciting, but she didn't mind.  
  
This night, she felt like staying up late with her newest book, the latest novel in a science fiction series she had fallen in love with. She had curled up in a comfortable armchair with the blanket wrapped around her legs and lost herself in the story. She found enough excitement to live on in the plots of her books, and was content.  
  
Suddenly, Helga was pulled out of the fantasy by the ringing of her doorbell. In the stillness of the late night, nearly the wee hours of the morning, the sound seemed deafeningly loud. She very quietly set the book down and carefully crept into the hallway, towards the door. She was a bit scared, wondering who could possibly be out this late in this normally quiet neighborhood, let alone who would need to visit her at this hour. So she reached for a conveniently placed baseball bat on her way, prepared for anything. She might have smiled fondly over the memories of her childhood associated with that familiar bat, if her mind wasn't concentrated on the situation. Right now, she was only happy that over the years she had also visited the gym regularly, keeping up with several martial arts. Even though she was a bit nervous about opening the door to see who was there, she at least felt safe with her own strength.  
  
She only thought she was prepared for anything before she opened the door and the light of her reading lamps illuminated the sight on her doorstep. The dirt of long travel and the gauntness of fatigue and near-starvation couldn't disguise the unique shape of that very familiar face that squinted up at her. Any thought of using her bat or her body as a weapon vanished as she let out a surprised gasp. But then the crouched figure collapsed across the threshold of her door, and she was at a total loss for what to do. 


	3. Part Three

Author's note: The next part might be a long time in coming. Midterms are coming up next week and then after that is a two-week break in which I'll be away from my computer for much of it. Once back from that is a forensics tournament. Basically, I'll be a bit busy in the near future. I'll try to work on the next part or at least sketch out an outline of the next stage of the story, but it could take awhile. Some short stories will most likely be posted between now and then, though. I'm much more prolific with those, in case you hadn't noticed. ^-^

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Helga Pataki's life had suddenly become a lot more exciting with the arrival of that surprising bundle on her stoop. Never in any of her wildest fancies had she imagined that any of her childhood classmates would literally tumble into her life like this. Especially not this particular male. If a Klingon warrior had attacked her when she opened that door, she would have been less surprised.

Now she had an unconscious Arnold tucked into the bed of her house's guestroom and a million questions swimming in her head.

She stood over him, unsure of what to do next. He was frighteningly thin, and obviously needed to eat, but he was unconscious. That state also hindered him answering even one of her many questions. He also needed new, clean, more comfortable clothes rather than the tatters that clung to his emaciated frame, but she wasn't sure if she had anything male enough to dress him in. Then there was the whole problem of dressing him. That also kept her from doing anything about the fact that he was unbelievably dirty, in need of multiple soakings and showers. But she decided to start with washing his face. That would help the dirt problem, and it might wake him enough to get something done about all the others.

So she brought a bowl of warm water, a washcloth, soap, and a soft towel into the room, pulling a chair close to the bed. Getting him into the bed hadn't been much of a problem for her. She was quite strong for her slender frame, and his starved body had been unhealthily light, making it easy to carry him in her arms to the room and gently place him in the bed. Now she sat leaning over him to gently bathe his face with the warm moistened cloth. She would then dry the area before the water could cool too much or run down onto the blanket. When he began shivering, she gave up washing away the grime to pull more blankets from the closet and spread them on the bed. Then she sat again to ponder the situation.

Helga decided all the why's, what's, and how's were worthless clutter for the moment. For now she had to wonder whether it was safe for her to go to bed while Arnold was lying there. That was if she could sleep at that point. She could easily come to the conclusion that although she had work the following day, she definitely wasn't going to show up whether she slept or not. So the first thing to do was to call in and leave a message on the business's voicemail warning them that she was taking the day off. She didn't feel she needed to specify why, since she very rarely even called in a sick day. No one would ask many questions. Next was the worry that he might wake up at some point and need something. She thought she should be there to help him if he did. And even if she did go to sleep, she wouldn't have to worry that this wasn't really the Arnold she used to know, that he hadn't turned into some homicidal bum, did she? She wanted to be sure that the gentle young boy she knew had grown up into a young man with an equally gentle personality, but she couldn't help being a bit paranoid. Dirty, starved, long-lost classmates showing up at a single woman's door wasn't an everyday occurrence and such a strange event should be shown proper caution, she thought.

  
That lead to Helga deciding that she would stay at his side until he awoke. She fetched her book from the living room, found a tiny clip-on-the-page book-light so as not to disturb him with light, and settled down in a chair a reasonable distance from the bed with the throw once again covering her lap and one eye on the sleeping man even as she read, long into the early hours of the morning.

-----

Helga awoke to rays of sunlight warming her face and a pressing urge to pee. She rubbed her eyes, as if to wipe the tiredness away, and then stood and stretched. She saw that Arnold was still asleep. She wasn't sure if he had ever woken up that night, or when exactly she had dozed off. As she walked to the bathroom, she tried to remember any of what she had read before falling asleep, but she couldn't. She had probably been concentrating too much on the not-quite-a-stranger sleeping in the bed to have really absorbed any of the words she saw. That was quite understandable.

After relieving herself and taking a really quick shower, she headed downstairs to brew coffee and something to eat. She made herself an omelette as quickly as possible, with diced ham, shredded cheese, and bits of green peppers. Helga was quite proud of her omelettes. She also toasted an English muffin and spread it thickly with strawberry jelly before carrying her plate back to the guestroom.

She sat in her chair again and balanced the plate on her knees while she ate. At first she watched Arnold sleep. Last night she had been far too startled by the turn of events to consider Arnold himself. As a child, and even as a teenager, she had been in love with him. It seemed beyond the usual school-crush that other girls had: what she felt for him since she was three. But as an adult that feeling had seemed to fade. Or maybe she had just shoved it aside, into the corner of her mind to be ignored. In either case, before she could sit and gaze upon him and wonder if she was still in love with him now, she wondered if it was ever love at all or just some exaggerated infatuation. She spaced out, staring straight ahead as she chewed automatically on her muffin and relived select memories of her girlhood in her head.

That's why it came as such a surprise when Helga heard the complete silence broken by a hoarse, loud whisper of, "Smells good."

She nearly dropped the plate as she came back to reality. Arnold's eyes were open, squinting at the light from the window, but looking at her. She just froze, staring back at him.

He spoke again in the same cracked voice. "Helga?" he asked.

She finally moved, nodding as she stood up and walked closer to her bed. "Yeah, it's me. Uh ... is there anything you need?"

"Yeah." He paused. "Where's the bathroom?" he whispered, while struggling to push back the blankets.

Helga watched him struggle to push away the cloth and realized how weak he was. Without thinking twice, she scooped him into her arms and carried him to the bathroom, setting him gently on his feet just inside the doorway. He just stared at her, leaning against the doorframe, eyes wide, before he said softly, "I think I can manage it from here." Due to her cleaning his face the night before, Helga could clearly see him blushing and thought it must match the one blooming on her own face. She quickly stepped back to let him shut the door and leaned against the wall nearby. Several minutes passed before he emerged again to lean heavily on the doorframe. She noted that his hands, like his face, were now starkly cleaner than the rest of him, and he must have had a drink of tap water because his voice was much smoother when he said, "I think I'll need some help getting back, until I can get something to eat and rest a little more." Helga noticed his battered feet and hesitated only a moment before coming forward to pick him up again.

"For now, this is the easiest way," she explained.

He smiled faintly; "It still feels very weird."

She smirked and then set him back down in the bed. "So what do you want to eat?"

"Uh, whatever you were eating before. It smelled great and I'm starving."

Helga flinched at his choice of phrase. It seemed all too literal. "Okay. Give me a few minutes." She turned to leave but stopped when he spoke again.

"Thank you, Helga."

"It's okay," she said over her shoulder as she left the room.

Arnold studied the room he was in as he waited for Helga to return. There wasn't much exciting to it. It was the typical bland guestroom. However he was more lost in thought than actually analyzing the room. He wondered how he got here, although the louder wondering came from his stomach, which wanted to know when it would be filled with warm food. His stomach, fortunately, didn't have too long to wonder. Helga was soon back with a plate covered in a steaming omelet and another jelly-coated muffin and a glass full of orange juice. His stomach was doing flips in anticipation.

"Remember not to eat too fast, it'll just make you sick," Helga warned as she set the plate down in his lap and placed the glass on the nearby nightstand.

"I know, I'll try," Arnold said quickly as he shoved the first forkful of food into his mouth. Helga tried to focus elsewhere as Arnold, although not gobbled, ate the omelet in what must have been record time. Once it was finished he worked on the muffin at a slower pace. "I probably shouldn't eat much all at once either, even though I think I could eat a couple dozen of your omelets. They're excellent."

Helga blushed at that. A silence that was not wholly comfortable settled over them as Arnold nibbled at the last of the muffin. "So…" Helga suddenly broke in awkwardly, "what brings you here?"

Arnold swallowed the last of his orange juice. "It's a long story, and I'm not sure if I want to tell it just now. I kind of want to get a shower and change into something less filthy." He paused for a small laugh. "If you don't mind?"

"No, whatever you'd like. You're a guest here now."

"A very unexpected one, I'm sure."

"No kidding, bucko. Anyway, you don't have to tell me anything until you're comfortable. I'll go find you something to change into." She said the last sentence while leaving the room. She ran upstairs to her room and sorted through her clothes until she found a plain white XL t-shirt and an old pair of blue gym shorts. On the left leg was a very faded logo print of the high school both she and Arnold had attended, and the words "Girls' Phys Ed" below it. She smiled at the thought of Arnold wearing them, but she was sure he wouldn't be picky enough to complain. And although they were her size, it seemed that in his current state he'd fit them well enough until she could find him something more suitable.

She carried the clothes back into the guestroom, where Arnold was just getting out of the bed, balancing on wobbling legs. Helga was ready to pick him up and carry him again, but he held out a hand.

"I'll try to handle it from here. The food helped a lot. I'll be fine."

Just the same, Helga hovered near him as he tottered to the bathroom. Finally he turned just inside the door and accepted the pile of clothes. "I can't believe you're doing all this for me, Helga. I wouldn't have believed you could be this kind, but I'm happy for the kindness all the same. I have no idea how I can make it all up to you, but I promise I'll try to. Thanks," he said sincerely. He then leaned forward to hug her, but she wound up supporting most of his weight, and righting him again.

"Are you sure you'll be okay in there? You won't crack that Football Head?" she asked with a teasing smile.

"I'll be fine," Arnold smiled back, with a wink.

Even as the door closed, Helga continued to stare at the area his face had just occupied. She wondered just what could develop from this most unexpected visit.


End file.
